“Then no wonder you had a row!” I said.
“He hadn’t told me he was coming. And was I to sit here all night alone? It’s always the same—I never knew a man who really in his heart was willing for you to have any friends, or any sort of good time without him.”
“Perhaps,” I replied, “he’s afraid you mightn’t be true to him.” I meant this for a jest, of the sort that Claire and her friends would appreciate. Little did I foresee where it was to lead us!
I remember how once on the farm my husband had a lot of dynamite, blasting out stumps; and my emotions when I discovered the children innocently playing with a stick of it. Something like these children I seem now to myself, looking back on this visit to Claire, and our talk.
“You know,” she observed, without smiling, “Larry’s got a bee in his hat. I’ve seen men who were jealous, and kept watch over women, but never one that was obsessed like him.”
“What’s it about?”
“He’s been reading a book about diseases, and he tells me tales about what may happen to me, and what may happen to him. When you’ve listened a while, you can see microbes crawling all over the walls of the room.”
“Well——” I began.
“I was sick of his lecturing, so I said, ‘Larry, you’ll have to do like me—have everything there is, and get over it, and then you won’t need to worry.’”
I sat still, staring at her; I think I must have stopped breathing. At the end of an eternity, I said, “You’ve not really had any of these diseases, Claire?”